wouldn't it be nice
by icanhearyouglaring
Summary: Valentine's Day, K-12 (and beyond). wally/artemis AU (for eruriku)
1. Kindergarten

**Kindergarten**

Wally is smart. _Very_ smart.

He knows he's smart, too, because he gets gold star stickers on all of his shape matching sheets, happy faces on his progress reports, and– most importantly– because his parents tell him so.

His _smartitude_ (and his awareness of it) is both a blessing and a curse in the West household.

"Are you sure you want to do them all by yourself, kiddo?" Mary West asks, snipping her scrapbooking scissors around the edges of the last bright red, heart-shaped, construction paper card.

"Yep," Wally says, popping the 'p'. He reaches across the table for a card.

Mary slides the finished stack closer to him from across the kitchen table and puts her scissors down, resigning herself to the fact that they're going to be sitting at this table for a very, very long time if Wally gets his way.

"Alrighty then, that's going to be _nineteen_ different names. That's a _lot_ of writing," she notes, and Wally's eyes positively sparkle with determination.

Mary immediately regrets lacing a challenge into her words.

Wally picks up his pencil and nods quickly. "I'm ready."

"Okay, you write the names and I'll read the list out. Let's start from the top." Mary drags her finger over the first name on the class roster. "Buddy Baker. That's going to be a big B-"

"Nooo," Wally whines loudly, replacing his ready smile with a pronounced pout, "I can spell it myself."

"My apologies," Mary says quickly, raising her hands in surrender. "Go ahead and spell it then."

"Buh-d-y." Wally sounds out his classmate's name determinedly as he puts his pencil to the card. "Bee-you…dee…dee-Eeeeeeee-oops."

He doesn't hesitate to erase the 'e' on the card.

"Buddy's the same as Wally, isn't it?" Wally asks, waiting for his mother to validate his theory.

"Yes," Mary says, proudly nodding, "and since it is the same, how would you spell it?"

"Bee-you-dee-dee-why," he recites, adding a smiley face to the card.

He hands the card over to Mary and she smiles in approval. Every letter is facing the right direction and he didn't curve his 'y' the wrong way again. She tapes a Kit-Kat to the back and puts it in a bag. Maybe they'll get through the roster faster than she thought.

"You're so smart, sweetie," she says, handing him another card from the stack. "Let's keep going. Next up: Artemis Crock."

Wally places the pencil down and stares at the card in front of him. Mary practically hears the screech of the brakes in his mind. His eyes dart from the card, to his pencil, to the roster in her hands, and back to the card. He looks up at her, momentarily defeated.

"… _Uh_ …"

"Would you like me to spell it?"

"…Yes, please."

* * *

The last thing Wally expects to see when he hands out the super special cards he wrote all by himself is someone _crying_.

The whole classroom is covered in reds and pinks, there's confetti and glitter all over the floor from one girl's crafty cards, they have free time, and there are _unlimited_ cookies. Wally can't think of a single reason why anyone would be sad when there were _unlimited_ cookies. But someone is, and that someone just so happens to be the last person standing between him and a trip to the goodie-bag covered table at the back of the room.

After Mr. Carr had set them loose to hand out their cards and candies, Wally had made a beeline through the room with his mother in tow. He made a show out of passing his cards out faster than anyone else, exchanging his for the cards his classmates had made for him and handing them to his mother as they walked. When only one remained, he whispered to his mother that he would pass this one out all by himself and meet her at the cookie table after he completed his special assignment.

(On her way to the table, Mary makes a note to herself about the continuity she'd unwittingly signed up for when she'd initiated playing secret agent before bathtime the previous night).

Artemis doesn't seem to be as concerned as Wally is about the lack of treats in her vicinity as she pushes around a pile of confetti back and forth across her desk with the edge of a valentine. Her eyes are fixed on the glimmering hearts and stars, and every so often she swipes her sleeve over her cheeks and sniffles.

Wally glances around for a good amount of time, searching for his mother, Mr. Carr, or another grown up to handle the situation, but then he remembers: he's a smart kid.

He can figure it out _all by himself._

And so, determined to understand, Wally takes his preferred path to answers: questions.

"Hey, Artemis, why are you crying?" he asks abruptly, taking care to tuck his card behind his back before she sees it.

Candy is distracting and Wally wants the Facts.

"I'm not," Artemis says quickly, looking up at him with hard, watery eyes, but the look does little to distract from the wobble in her voice.

"Are too," he informs her, using his free hand to point at the wet spot on her sleeve.

She uses her hand to hide the spot and shakes her head. "Am not."

He moves his finger to point at the spot on her other sleeve. "Are too."

"Am not," Artemis huffs, narrowing her eyes before crossing her arms and effectively covering both spots from view. "Go away."

Wally is not so easily deterred. "Why are you hiding now?"

"I am not _hiding_. I like sitting like this," she explains pointedly, scooting further down in her seat.

"But why?" Wally whines, tapping his foot against the floor with far more force than necessary.

"Because," Artemis sighs, the same way his mom does when it's almost bedtime and he's not tired, "it's _my_ seat and _my_ arms and _I_ sit how _I_ want."

Well, she's got him there. As Wally tries to think of a new approach, he gets pushed by a passing classmate as they rush past him to get to the snack table. The air current that follows knocks some of the confetti off Artemis's desk and onto the floor. She pouts at the loss.

"Hey, wait a minute," Wally says, gesturing at her card-sparse desk. "Where's your valentines at?"

Artemis uncrosses her arms and protectively places her hand over the one valentine on her desk. "Right here."

"Yeah, but where's the rest?" Wally presses, pointing to the desk beside her where a stack of mismatched cards is one desk-bump away from being scattered across the floor.

Artemis looks around the room warily before she hesitantly admits, "No one will give them to me."

"What?" he asks, his eyes wide with shock.

"Yeah… I don't have mine, and everyone's trading, so they skipped me…" Artemis carefully picks up the lone card on her desk, examines it in her hands, and adds, "Megan gave me one though."

"Well, where's yours at?"

Artemis frowns and her sniffles make a reappearance as she starts looking around the room again. She puts down Megan's card before answering.

"My dad was supposed to bring them before snack time, and I told him ten times what time, too, but-" she pauses to quickly rub at her eye, but the attempt to hide her tears falls short as her voice breaks as she continues, "but he's still late."

Ignoring the siren blaring in his mind, the one that exists to let him know when getting a grown up would be a really great, big boy idea, Wally takes a deep breath and decides to prove he can fix this all by himself.

"Here," he says quickly, holding out her card, a heart with a lollipop poking out like an arrow on one side. "I made this one for you."

Artemis's eyebrows knit as she sits up in her seat and asks, "Really?"

"Yeah," he says with a nod, holding it closer to her, "I don't need a trade. It's your Valentine. Look it, I even wrote your name all by myself."

Artemis's last tear stops in its tracks at the edge of her eye as she takes the card from him and places it between Megan's card and the pile of confetti.

"Thanks, Walter," she says with the tiniest of sniffles and biggest of smiles, before she gasps, stands up, and nearly knocks her chair to the floor in her haste.

Wally has to jump out of the way to avoid her as she sprints towards the front of the room and straight into the arms of the tall man at the door. Using his secret agent detective skills, he deduces that the man must be her father and the bag he passes to Artemis must be filled with her cards.

"That's not my name," he grumbles to himself as he watches her rifle through her bag.

"Hey, kiddo," his mother says from behind him, calling his attention and presenting him with a napkin with a heart-shaped cookie on it. "I found your favorite."

The cookie solves everything.

" _Yessss_ ," Wally cheers, taking the cookie off the napkin and shoving half of it into his mouth before he adds, "Tanks, Ma."

Before he can eat the other half of his cookie, he feels a hard poke on his shoulder and turns around to find a pink heart in his face.

Artemis beams at him from behind the card and says, "I got yours first. Here."

"Fanks," he says through a mouthful as he takes the card and the candy attached to it. Before he can say another word (read: correct her on his name), Artemis takes off to hand out her next card to the only other redhead in the class.

His mother laughs lightly and runs her fingers through her son's hair as he huffs at the lost opportunity and starts opening the Smarties taped to the card. Mary, having watched from the sidelines as her son diffused his crying classmate, finds herself beaming with pride.

She's always been proud of her son, for a lot of reasons– the gold stars, the happy faces, never a bad note sent home- but today, if he asked, she'd say she's proudest of his heart.


	2. First Grade

**First Grade**

Barry loves Iris's nephew– _his_ nephew now– but having a kid running around their brand new house wasn't exactly part of The Plan (not for a few years, at least). Nothing is kid-proofed and the more Wally explores the house, the more Barry realizes they are living in a death trap. The fixer-upper they'd chosen in the heart of Central City's suburbs had seemed like a great project, a place they could make their own with (quite) a few weekends and a little elbow grease, and hey, you couldn't beat the price they paid for it in _that_ neighborhood.

It takes Wally less than five minutes to lose a tooth to the uneven pavement in the backyard.

"Their flight hasn't left yet. We can still make the call," Barry says under his breath as he approaches Iris, the recovered tooth (slightly bloody, slightly muddy) in the palm of his hand.

Iris swats his arm and nods her head towards the closed bathroom door. "Stop that, before he hears you. I don't have to remind you that this isn't our first rodeo."

"Yes, but all the other rodeos have been at his house, where the staircase is padded and there aren't exposed nails jutting out of the floorboards."

Iris snorts. "He's not getting into the attic, Barry. You worry too much. Now, give me the tooth."

Barry drops the tooth into her waiting hand and motions for her to start rounding up her– _their_ – nephew.

Iris knocks on the door and jiggles the handle. "Wally, Barry found your tooth. Told ya you didn't swallow it. You can come out now."

"No!" Wally squawks, pulling the doorknob to keep the door closed.

Iris tries turning the handle again, but it buckles, locking at one point before unlocking and buckling again. One strong tug later and it breaks entirely. The screws fall to the floor and the handle rests in Iris's grip. Wally holds his half of the door knob from inside the bathroom.

Barry gapes. "Tell me that didn't just happen."

Iris holds up her half of the doorknob in slight awe. "Oh, it happened."

"I didn't do it!" Wally says quickly, dropping his handle to the floor with a loud clang.

Iris leans down to look through the new hole in the door and does not like what she sees. The bathroom looks like one of Barry's crime scenes, covered in bloody fingerprints and smears and Wally looks more like a child actor coming off of the set of a horror movie than her spunky nephew.

Iris stands to her full height, takes a deep breath, and squares her shoulders. She will not be defeated by a seven-year-old. Not today.

"Hold this," she says, handing the doorknob (and the tooth) to Barry before rolling up her sleeves and pushing the door. "I'm going in."

* * *

Iris might have won the battle last night, but Wally is determined to win the war this morning. Two blocks from school, Wally decides his injuries are too horrific to expose to the public, and without Iris around to play bad cop, Barry is thrust into his first solo attempt at preventing a meltdown.

"I'm not going. I'm _ugly_!"

Barry has to admit it; Wally's right, sort of. The swollen, purple lip isn't pretty and neither is the red patch of tiny scratches on his chin. The missing tooth is kind of charming though.

"You're not ugly," Barry reassures him, making eye contact through the rear view mirror. "You're going to school."

Wally pouts from his car seat. "I _am_ ugly. My chin is all scratchy and I have a hole in my mouth."

"You're _not_ ugly. If you didn't like how your chin looked, why didn't you want the band-aid your aunt wanted to put on it?"

"I don't like the plain kind," Wally explains, his voice gaining more whine by the second.

"Noted," Barry says, turning into the school parking lot and joining the long queue in the drop-off lane. "Next time, we'll get the red ones."

"I don't want to go," Wally says resolutely, crossing his arms in front of his carseat buckle.

"You're going," Barry says, turning around to face his nephew. "C'mon, kid, it's Valentine's Day. No one is going to say anything about your tooth. They'll be too busy with the party."

Wally's arms drop and his eyes widen. His mouth opens just enough to reveal the gap in his top row of teeth.

 _Bingo_ , Barry thinks.

"You forgot about the party?" Barry guesses, as he watches Wally rush to unbuckle himself.

"I didn't forget," Wally protests, picking his backpack off of the floor of the car.

Barry pulls forward in the queue and says, "Sure you didn't. I put your valentines in the front pouch of your backpack."

"Thank you!" is all the warning he gets before Wally throws his arm around his neck in a quick (chokehold of a) hug.

"Don't eat your candy before you have your lunch," Barry reminds him, patting Wally's head (and gently pushing him back). "I'm picking you up today and I won't forget to check."

Wally nods his head rapidly as the aide opens the car door for him and he gets out of the car.

"You got it. See you later, Uncle Barry!"

Barry waits for Wally to run through the school gate before he heeds the aide's waving hand and pulls out of the parking lot. As Barry drives to the police station, he muses that putting a battle under his belt doesn't feel half as good as hearing Wally finally call him _uncle_.

* * *

Uncle Barry is right, for the most part. Ms. Prince is the only one who asks where Wally's tooth went and if he'd like a band-aid for his chin (he tells her the tooth fairy took it and says no to the band-aid because the school ones are plain, too). For most of the morning, everyone is too busy passing out cards and candies (so many candies, each one a new temptation, but he won't let Uncle Barry down) to say a word about his missing tooth or bruised lip– until recess.

One second he's running through the playground in search of a hiding spot, the next he's getting pulled behind the climbing wall.

"What happened to your face?" Artemis asks, keeping her grip on his sleeve even as he pulls away from her.

"I fell down," Wally answers, raising his hand to cover his mouth.

Artemis releases her hold on his sleeve and tries to move his hand. "Can I see?"

"No," Wally says, stepping back into the wall.

Artemis frowns at him. "You lost a tooth. I want to see."

Wally puts both of his hands to his mouth before he asks, "Why?"

"'Cause I have a loose tooth. See?" Artemis smiles and uses her tongue to push against her front teeth.

One wiggles, just barely.

Wally puts his hands down. "Oh."

"Yeah," Artemis says, nodding, "and my sister said it's going to hurt _really_ bad when it comes out."

"It didn't hurt _that_ bad," Wally says, pointedly ignoring the twenty minutes he spent crying over the bathroom sink.

"Really?" Artemis asks, still staring at his fat lip.

Wally nods. "Yeah, it was loose before I fell. It just popped out."

"Oh," Artemis says, processing in the new information, "that's good."

"Yeah," he agrees, smiling wide.

Artemis squints at his face.

"What?" Wally asks after a moment. His hands itch to cover his mouth again.

"Jade said the gap would look ugly, but I don't think it is," Artemis says, shrugging before her eyes drift to something behind him. "Uh-oh."

She takes off at a sprint towards the monkey bars without another word.

"Wha–?"

"Hey!" Tula runs into the hiding place, out of breath and full of sugar.

"Found you, Wally!" Tula says with a laugh as she tags his arm. "You're it!"

 _"Aw man!"_


End file.
